


how one we grow

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [207]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/M, Folklore, Foreshadowing, Foresight & Visions, Immigration & Emigration, Ireland, Lalwen is Finwe's sister here not his daughter, title from a Sylvia Plath poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23456029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: One for sorrow, two for joy.
Relationships: Finwë/Míriel Þerindë | Míriel Serindë
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [207]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	how one we grow

**Author's Note:**

> For starryeyedgates on Tumblr.

_And now I_

_Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas._

_The child’s cry_

_Melts in the wall._

_And I_

_Am the arrow,_

_The dew that flies_

_Suicidal, at one with the drive_

_Into the red_

_Eye, the cauldron of morning._

_\- Sylvia Plath_ , Ariel

Every story has a beginning. Most are best told when the beginning is unknown; an unstrung moment dangling like a thread from the weave of time.

The mad girl of the moors is unknown to the Dublin boy. _He_ sees her thus: her hair, telling a lie of gold in the noon sun. A basket of flowers on her arm. If these were the days of the old, tight-laced stays, he could have put two hands round her slim waist.

But these are the days of sprigged muslin stitched into simple chemises. It is, in fact, the year before the turn; Finwe is nineteen years old.

What does he know? He likes to think that he possesses much in the way of wisdom. Finwe had read the old myths. He knew when he saw her, this girl, that she was every goddess, every nymph, in one.

“Miriel Serinde,” she says. “I have no father or mother, if it’s them you’re seeking.”

(This is how she introduces herself.)

“Oh,” he says, quite foolishly (and him of a tongue as has never been called foolish!). “I came to see Doctor McKiernan; I am a smith, and he has ordered some metalwork.”

“And I’m cared for under his roof,” she says, smiling so that a dimple, soft as the hollow of a petal, presses into one cheek. This is her secret smile, her tender, wondering smile…and she gives it to him _first_. “Nothing more than an orphan, you understand. He’s a great man, same as you, and he’ll see you when you call.”

She knows all this. She isn’t guessing.

“You’ll be the death of me,” she sighs, when Finwe presses close, all his strong square angles overpowering her frame, but not her fire.

“You’ll be the death of me… _ó a Mhuire, a Mhuire_ , kiss me again, I love you, I love you, you great, terrible man—”

In 1800, Dublin is full of great men, small minds, cobblestones, horse-dung, doctors, and the coming age of further oppression.

Finwe departs before he can die like the Parliament.

He takes the slip of a moor-fae with him, Lalwen as unwilling chaperone, and they sail for America.

Lalwen enters a convent.

 _I’ll marry you when I have a little more money_ , he promises, left alone with his Miriel. The Finweans are doughty but not rich. The folk left in Erin hold a comfortable farm; that is all. It isn’t a son’s proper inheritance.

Miriel, finding place after place among the well-to-do families of Philadelphia, plies her needle to fervent adulation, and promises that everything shall be just as Finwe hopes.

It is three years before he marries her; seven before the end.

“Do you know how much I love you?”

He kisses her agile hand. She has rough callouses hidden along her slender fingers. She is a needlewoman before all else. “How much, my darling?” He knows all of her, now, since they are wed, and he knows she likes to answer her own questions.

“I love you so much I’d die for you,” she says. “People say it o’er all their lives, not meaning it. Women say they’d die for the husband, but it’s him that goes off to war. And they say they love him to death, but then _they_ do the killing, with words. With their ugly, sagging skin.” She smiles sharply. “I’ll die for you, Finwe-mine, and you’ll think of me young forever, won’t you? In exchange?”

He is eager to please. So is she, somehow, despite the wild spells that keep the neighbors talking. She has hands like Ariadne’s must have been. He spends every penny he can on silk threads.

_When I weave, I sleep._

_But your eyes are open._

_Oh, my love. You do not understand._

He comes home, two years before life kicks in her belly, to find her singing. She paces, loose-limbed, in endless circles on the carpet she hooked. The servants are nowhere to be found, and this is just as well. Finwe is torn by the lure of beauty he sees in her, like this: her dress undone and her hair streaming down like moonlight on her white shoulders.

_One for sorrow,  
Two for joy,  
Three for a girl,  
Four for a boy,_

“My love?”

She fixes her eyes on him. They are shining in the half-dark house.

_Five for silver  
Six for gold,  
Seven for a secret,  
Never to be told._

“Miriel!”

“What is it?” she lilts. “Do you not like it, Finwe? Do you not like the _English rhyme_?”

“I do not know why you sing it…” And he goes to her, and he covers her, fastening the buttons of her bodice.

She shuts her eyes and hums. When the first tear slips down her cheek, he draws her close against him. His shoulder is much wider than her high, pale brow, and so she hides in her collar, and murmurs,

_Eight for a wish,  
Nine for a kiss,  
Ten for a bird,  
You must not miss._

“I’ll not be able to provide for our family,” he ventures, carefully treading in search of proper gaiety, “If you keep on like this, _a ghrá_.”

“Our family?” Her head snaps back. There is fire in her now, fierce to behold. “Do you want one, with me? You take me to your bed, but your heart’s not in it. You want strong sons and I—”

The weeping goes on a while. She cries herself out and he carries her to their room. She sleeps without weaving. He stretches out beside her, still quite young himself.

_Eleven is worse_   
_Twelve for a dastardly curse._

The whole world, as much as it knows her at all, thinks her mad.

There is pity for the handsome black Irishman with the wild wife. But when she is with child—when her frail frame blooms—all the rage and fear leave her. She sits quietly, and she sings good Irish melodies, and she cries when Finwe touches her, but only (she says) because she loves him too much.

“I was made to be a vessel,” she says. “Is that just? There’s never been else about me to stay— _here_. Not until you. Not until _him_. And now—”

“You mustn’t talk like that,” Finwe pleads.

And in time, she doesn’t, for she is made silent in death.

**Author's Note:**

> ó a Mhuire, a Mhuire = Mary, Mary (as in Our Lady) - an expression of sorrow  
> a ghrá = my love


End file.
